


Tore Me Up Everytime I Heard Her Drawl

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 15:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Hilda’s a riverboat gambler.





	Tore Me Up Everytime I Heard Her Drawl

“Zelds. We can’t. I have to be at the table in an hour. With 25 grand. And all my wits about me,” Hilda grinds out haltingly and breathlessly between sloppy kisses.

Zelda shoves Hilda harder against the swollen wooden door, presses her body in closer, skims a hand beneath the silk of Hilda’s dress, fingers luxuriating on an even smoother thigh.

“Oh you’ll be much clearer and focused when I’m through with you. And if it’s not inside of an hour, I’ll eat my hat,” Zelda says.

“You’re not wearing a hat.” 

Zelda’s fingers move, manipulate fabric, find wet folds. She exhales sharply at that realization against Hilda’s ear then says,

“My proverbial hat.” She’s still exploring and now rubbing with intent, pads of her fingers palpating Hilda’s clit now. Hilda moans:

“Proverbial Satan!” 

Zelda continues. One hand is at Hilda’s waist steadying her, the other is in Hilda’s knickers—slow circles, fast circles, side-to-side, up-and-down, side-to-side again. Hilda groans and her knees just about give out. Zelda catches her, but barely, husks,

“Your cabin has a rather well-appointed berth...”

Hilda’s eyes open, sudden and piercing:

“But if I’m in it, I won’t want to leave it. And then I won’t be winning at poker.”

“Hmm. And you are such a miser with your pocket money,” Zelda says as she props Hilda more firmly against the door, kisses her, continues touching.

“You’re jealous because you have bad—” she inadvertently swallows “luck” as Zelda’s middle finger slides into her.

“Good thing you’re never a gamble, hmm?”

“Please. Just let me have this one thing,” Hilda pants.

“Which one thing?”

“Uh…” Zelda’s mouth is at her neck, and her fingers have gone back to rubbing slow, tight circles. Hilda cants her hips and feels Zelda’s other hand tighten on her waist, dig in. She’s more than halfway to capitulating, then remembers the smug look on that degenerate faux outlaw’s face— “The other thing,” she whispers.

Zelda’s face raises to look into Hilda’s eyes, and her eyebrows are up, her lips smirking:

“The other thing does take a bit longer.”

“Not that other thing. The other other thing!” She pushes at Zelda’s shoulders until Zelda has removed herself fully. Hilda adjusts her clothing, says, “Cut-Throat Carl will not be having the last laugh tonight!”

xxx

Hilda had boarded The Freshwater Mermaid at Vicksburg as a proper lady in green silk toting a matching set of traveling trunks, seen off by a maiden aunt. She wouldn’t be traveling with a chaperone, but the captain had assured the maiden aunt she’d be well looked after.

They had to pretend at the 1870s decorum at only the ports, dainty gloves and letters of character and chivalric steamer captains to be scrutinized by marshals and society women until they were again headed down river and they could resume their business of gambling and general debauchery. As long as everyone wore the right thing and kept their revolvers under their jackets for the duration of the informal inspections, no one would be the wiser. An open genteel secret.

Hilda dances and drinks, does some light gambling for practice, getting to know her potential opponents’ tells.

An open genteel secret. She doesn’t employ her empathetic tendencies. That would be cheating, and she can’t abide that. There are a lot of things she can’t abide.

xxx

And then they dock at Natchez.

Hilda’s dancing a waltz with a very dapper gentleman on his way home to New Orleans, and so she only intermittently glimpses who is walking up the gangplank. She’s not too worried about the competition, but she is curious, so she keeps her eyes keen during each rotation.

She’s dead weight in his arms as she spots him. Him of all people.

Cut-Throat Carl is swaggering in. That’s what he calls himself these days. He’s executed a few train robberies and killed a few Indians, if his own boasts can be believed. Which why should they be? During their Academy days, when he’d still been just Charles Birdsong, he regularly copied her homework as he leeringly peered down her blouse. She doubts he can hold even one thought in his head at a time, let alone the number of thoughts necessary to pull off a train heist or beat her at five-card stud. She’s so incensed at seeing his outrageously handsome face that she almost doesn’t catch that on his arm is an incomparably glamorous red-head.

She’s now so heavy and pale in her dance partner’s arms that he scoops her up, says,

“Cherie, are you unwell? Do you have smelling salts on your person?”

She allows him to deposit her in a chair and then says,

“Thank you, kind sir. I am well. Simply. Taken aback. I hadn’t expected my sister to board just now.”

xxx

Cut-Throat Carl is at a back table, being dealt in to a game of faro. And Zelda’s sitting on his knee. He’s got a waxed mustache, and she’s got a painted face.

And Hilda’s got a lot of questions.

As far as she’d known, Zelda had been running the mortuary. But of course, she was supposed to have been in England currently, serving as a governess to a duke’s family.

As she approaches the table, her eyes meet Zelda’s. There’s a spark there, a little of the old this and that they’ve always shared, and then Zelda is whispering into Cut-Throat Carl’s ear.

He frowns and folds his hand.

Hilda has paused a yard and a half away, hides herself as best she can behind a velvet curtain so she can more aptly watch this. 

Zelda whispers again into his ear and then rises languidly. She sashays indecorously toward Hilda. Whereas Hilda has deliberately intended to look like a society lady, Zelda has decided the opposite, has apparently decided she can blend in better looking like a high-end madame, all ruffles and lipstick and confidence.

Zelda grabs Hilda’s forearm, leads her away from her hiding place behind the heavy curtains toward the bar.

They sit next to each other on stools at mahogany and drink, and Hilda says,

“Charles Birdsong, really?”

“All for you, sister. Don’t you want to know what I said to him?”

The bartender refills their glasses, and Hilda hastily drinks, hastily says,

“Absolutely not!”

Zelda laughs, drinks, tells her anyway:

“I asked him whether he’d ever actually cut a throat. I told him I had and that it had been thrilling but terrifying.”

Hilda looks over at her. Zelda’s face is haughty but searching, a little guilty. Hilda opens her mouth to ask her to elucidate, but Zelda’s still talking:

“I saw him on the train, recognized him. I knew I could ruin him so you could take his money.”

There is a silent, fraught beat in which they look at each other.

“But why were you on that train in the first place?” Hilda says.

“All for you, sister.” Zelda downs another shot.

“I can appreciate a woman who plays the long game,” Hilda says. “But forgive me if I have trouble reconciling that that’s you.”

Zelda places a hand over Hilda’s on the bar, laughs, says,

“You’ve underestimated me. I can understand that. I can abide that. But you’ll have to pay for it, regardless.” She squeezes Hilda’s hand, looks into her eyes. “And you know how I prefer to collect.”

Hilda swallows.

She’s been killed. She’s been fucked. She’s fucked. She’s been humiliated. She’s been a subject and she’s been an object. She’s been and not been, here and there.

She attempts to piece together her current situation but still she doesn’t know what role she might play in Zelda’s game.

xxx

It’s the real thing now.

Either Hilda will come away from the table with a half million bucks or she’ll be defeated. She wants it to be on her own merit either way.

She’s lost a hand, won another two.

And then Zelda wafts in in all her finery, places herself on Cut-Throat Carl’s lap. 

Hilda’s jaw clenches. Zelda’s deft fingers are playing with his tie, and Hilda refocuses herself, reorients herself to count cards, analyze tells.

xxx

It becomes tense. Everyone is all in. And Hilda reveals her hand. She wins. A straight flush. Improbable. But still. There it is. Hilda has won.

xxx

“I told you, didn’t I,” Zelda says.

Hilda fists her duvet, bucks her hips against Zelda’s mouth, gasps:

“You told me. But I couldn’t believe you.” 

Zelda looks up, face glistening, says,

“You’re a fool. But I love you anyway.”

Zelda thrusts deep and hard, three fingers to the hilt. Hilda moans, cries out,

“The odds were always on your side.”

“And don’t I know it,” Zelda says as she slinks up and kisses Hilda, fingers still pumping.


End file.
